The 1990s were a heady time for the culinary stars in this town, as the creative talents of New Worlders, Pacific Rimmers, Nuevo Latinos, Mango Gangers, et al., catapulted South Florida onto the nation’s culinary map. Champagne corks flew, flashbulbs popped, puffy personality pieces appeared, heralding the unique fusion of…
“This is why we moved to South Beach in the first place!” exclaimed my companion. It’s something we used to say to each other frequently when we came from New York City almost a decade ago. It almost always involved a “shirtsleeve experience,” like lunching in lushly planted tropical patios…
There are three key components to Christine’s Roti Shop: 1) Christine. As you enter the small shop you may see a woman busily rolling out balls of roti dough. This is Christine Gouveia, from British Guyana. She is perpetually amicable, always eager to chat, and judging from all the people…
When Tango Beef Café folded last spring it was surprising that the closure was even noticed. The parrillada had featured an unusually varied selection of grilled meats, but it’s not as though North Beach doesn’t have a glut of other good Argentine grills, especially when, about three months ago, Tango…
The bright, minimalist, metallic-cool interior of Café 71 stands out in this grim, brown Biscayne block like a comic strip plunked smack-dab in the middle of a James Joyce book. Motorists going by the corner of 71st Street look over at the contemporary cafe with disbelief in their eyes: What’s…
It was not for food that I first, about a year ago, went to Wah Shing Chinese restaurant. It was for karaoke, which had suddenly become hugely hip among my younger friends. I’d never done this singing-to-vocally-zapped-recordings thang myself, maybe because I spent a young adulthood playing in actual live…
South Beach’s favorite (and only) Austrian/German pub and eatery, formerly a teeny, cavernous room on Alton Road and Ninth Street, is now housed in a far roomier space two blocks north, just up the street from Wild Oats Market. Most everything else about Dab Haus remains the same — the…
Those who know of Barton Gerald Weiss’s reputation as the event impresario with an inclination for multisensory, over-the-top theatrics will probably be surprised by the subtle brown and bronze earth tones that swathe the tasteful, relatively restrained décor of Barton G the Restaurant. I say “relatively” because the 155-seat dining…
Although the cuisines of different but neighboring Latin American countries certainly differ more than the cuisines of, say, Vermont and New Hampshire, many individual dishes seem like variations on a similar base. Thus El Salvador’s pupusas (stuffed cornmeal pancakes) are somewhat like a cross between Mexican corn tortillas and Venezuelan…
Maybe it’s due to Dickens and Tiny Tim, maybe it’s all those British-origin Christmas carols full of hearty tidings of comfort and joy — the warm ‘n’ fuzzy fascination with Merrie Olde England felt by most Americans (including Latin Americans, if the astonishingly positive feedback to a review I did…
I have to admit my appreciation for Arab culture skyrocketed when I discovered that they invented sorbet. It’s true — the Chinese taught them how to make sweet syrup from puréed fruit, and the Arabs took this knowledge to Sicily, combined these syrups with snow from Mount Etna, and called…
This original low-rise Deli Lane (there’s a newer branch on Brickell, on the ground floor of one of downtown’s skyscrapers) has been around since the 1980s, making it one of Miami’s first purveyors of gentrified yuppie food: quiches and similar light entrées, vegetable salads consisting of lettuces other than iceberg,…
One of the world’s less-pleasant sounds is the dismissive grunt of a New Yorker as he or she proclaims the pizza in some part of America to be an inedible parody of the real thing that they, thank God, are privy to in their great city. It’s not that this…
What the world needs now is love sweet love, but what Miami Beach needs is affordable restaurants. The recently opened Alton Road Café fits the inexpensive bill, though it’s more diner, or coffee shop, than restaurant or café. The space was previously an IHOP (attached to the 41st Street Howard…
It seemed not inappropriate to me that the recent opening of Jerry’s Famous Deli, in the sleek South Beach space long occupied by the nightclub Warsaw, was accompanied by the kind of media brouhaha normally reserved for the premiere of exclusive restaurant/lounges co-owned by celebrities. The prospect of great hot…
Yep, holiday gift-giving season has arrived, want it or not. And what will all of you workaholics who’re too busy to shop be giving this year — a bouquet of flowers … again? Since this isn’t the flora but the food section of the newspaper, let’s talk about fruit flowers,…
You wouldn’t think that giving diners what they want would be a particularly unique strategy for operating a restaurant. Even those with no experience in the hospitality field would no doubt assume that pleasing customers is something every potential restaurateur would seriously focus upon from day one. Yet this apparently…
If you look very hard high up on the ceiling of Doraku, a sophisticated spot with minimalist mode-of-the-moment décor (relying largely on the natural elegance of contrasting polished woods), like a Terence Conran-type take on a traditional Japanese teahouse, you will notice that the subdued mesh-muted lights appear to be…
Here we are on the cusp of November, and I’m just getting around to writing about Oktoberfest. Very tardy on my part — after all, we know that Oktoberfest takes place in September. What’s that? You thought it took place in October? Jeez — we better start from the beginning…
As a food reviewer who does not keep kosher (I’m not Jewish), but who fields many requests for truly tasty kosher noshes from diners who do, I was excited early this year when new Kosher Gourmet opened with ads touting two things that run-of-the-mill kosher bakeries rarely have: prepared foods…
You can’t really fault the Cheesecake Factory people if, over the years, they’ve developed a bemused attitude while the front window of their popular eatery in the Aventura Mall food court has intermittently reflected the changing of restaurant signs in the space across the way. Soyka tried a News Café…
Recently I had a houseguest who presented a bit of a challenge in offering her a truly impressive dining experience. She’d grown up with a grandmother who was English, who was so wealthy that her idea of shopping was taking the QE2 over to Manhattan for an afternoon on Fifth…
